The thirteenth Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash is up! You may get a chuckle or two out of it. More holiday goodness is on the way! We've still got two more Gumby shorts to review, you know.
In other news, yeah, I'm still feeling ill. Woke up around 9AM this morning, felt like hell, took some store brand Nyquil, drank some water and microwaved V8, and then went back to sleep and didn't rise again until roughly 3PM. I hadn't planned on sleeping so damned late, but I guess I needed the rest. I feel a little better now.
I had an odd dream about playing a nameless video game that, now that I'm awake, reminds me of Battle Royale and a little of eXistenZ, in that I actually felt like I was IN the game. I've had nested dreams before -- in which I was dreaming within a dream -- but I've never had a dream in which I dreamed that I was in a really lifelike game before -- lifelike enough to fool me for the time being. So the Battle Royale part was that I was charged with the task of murdering a bunch of high school kids, except, given my warrior's dress, I don't think I was also a student. Anyway, killing them was not at all like in a video game -- in games, you stab enemies and they more/less die straight away, but in this one they'd continue to come at you and do various things until they finally succumbed. In one part I had this weapon that looked kinda like a black badminton birdie -- you'd fire it at an enemy in the distance and it would basically annoy the enemy and cause him/her to run around blindly swatting at it... whereupon you could rush in and kill off said enemy. But it didn't work on everyone, and I kept firing it at this one stoic girl who entirely ignored the thing. She looked too tough to take head on, and I didn't dare move from my position into her attack range -- one part about the game that was like real video games is that enemies would only attack if you came within a certain distance of them, and would otherwise leave you alone even if you stood in plain sight -- so I kept blasting it at her to no effect. After flitting about her head for a bit, it would boomerang back.
Shortly after I fired the birdie at the girl for the fifth time, a guy came walking across my line of sight, not too close, but closer to me than he was to the distant tough girl. He wasn't really paying attention, so he didn't see me... nor did he see the birdie, which caught him on its return from the girl. Due to its interference, he suddenly started flailing his arms and ran in the direction of the girl -- who broke out of her trance and ran at him screaming, brandishing a samurai sword, and viciously cut him down within moments. Of course, she was now standing close enough for me to draw her attention, and she looked up to attack -- but having anticipated this turn of events, I was already in motion, rushing towards her, and impaled her through the gut before she even had a chance to pull her bloodied sword out of the unfortunate boy she'd just slain. As she died, with my sword still embedded in her gut and protruding out of her back, she clawed at me violently, raking off strips of my skin with her painted nails. Finally her eyes glazed over, her mouth fell slack, and she slumped back as far as the sword in her belly would allow.
Then I came out of the game -- but was still in the dream -- and began freaking out. My dad told me to shut up and stop playing that game. Then I woke up.
Interesting stuff, eh?